From my Googling, it appears as though the default behavior in Wordpress is to add paragraphs automatically, but in the HTML view, regardless of what style I choose in the Visual Editor's style drop-down (paragraph, for example), paragraph tags never appear. I also do not see wpautop() called anywhere in my theme (which I inherited from a now departed developer).

What can I do to set this straight? Adding <p> tags to everything is obviously not going to fly with the content editors.

You're welcome to write a patch to change the behavior, but I doubt it would get implemented. :)
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Chip BennettJun 1 '12 at 18:49

I'll live with it. Where abouts would I go to re-enable this? I just grep'ed through the theme directory for wpautop with no results.
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gravyfaceJun 1 '12 at 18:54

Re-enable what, exactly? wpautop() is added as a filter to the_content, in wp-includes/default-filters.php.
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Chip BennettJun 1 '12 at 19:14

1

Odd, it's there (add_filter( 'the_content', 'wpautop' );), but when I create a new page, type a paragraph, add a line break (and highlight the text and choose "paragraph" from the styles, it looks great in the visual editor but when I publish it, there's no paragraph tags wrapping it; this is why I've been adding them manually in the HTML tab.
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gravyfaceJun 1 '12 at 19:37